University of Huddersfield Repository Cox, Geoffrey A Return to the Future or Forward to the Past? Original Citation Cox, Geoffrey (2010) A Return to the Future or Forward to the Past? Contemporary Music Review, 29 (3). pp. 251-264. ISSN 0749-4467 This version is available at http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/12066/ The University Repository is a digital collection of the research output of the University, available on Open Access. Copyright and Moral Rights for the items on this site are retained by the individual author and/or other copyright owners. Users may access full items free of charge; copies of full text items generally can be reproduced, displayed or performed and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided: • The authors, title and full bibliographic details is credited in any copy; • A hyperlink and/or URL is included for the original metadata page; and • The content is not changed in any way. For more information, including our policy and submission procedure, please contact the Repository Team at:
[email protected]. http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/ A Return to the Future or Forward to the Past? Geoffrey Cox The literary origins of the 1945 ‘zero hour’ concept are traced and its relation and importance to post-war avant-garde music is explored, as is the power of its concomitant polemics. The apparent hegemony of the resulting total serialist music and its associated ideas of newness and history are questioned and then compared to the reaction against it in the 1960s, when radical ideas about man’s relationship with and understanding of time and history grew.